Two teens accused of fatally shooting carryout clerk now face a second murder charge

Tuesday

Jul 30, 2013 at 12:01 AMJul 31, 2013 at 9:56 AM

A 17- and 18-year-old already accused in last week's slaying of a South Side carryout clerk are now charged with killing an acquaintance a few hours later. Columbus police charged Nathaniel Brunner, 18, and Devonere Simmonds, 17, with murder yesterday in Thursday's slaying of Lamont Frazier.

A 17- and 18-year-old already accused in last week’s slaying of a South Side carryout clerk are now charged with killing an acquaintance a few hours later.

Frazier, 17, was shot to death just blocks from the Convenient Plus Food Mart on E. Livingston Avenue where, last Wednesday night, clerk Imran Ashgar was shot and killed. Frazier likely was killed about 1:30 a.m. Thursday, authorities say, though his body wasn’t found on the sidewalk at Oakwood and Forest streets until daylight.

Brunner appeared in Franklin County Municipal Court yesterday morning after being returned from Dayton on Monday. He and Simmonds were arrested there on Saturday morning after they were found sleeping inside a stolen car.

Brunner is being held on $1.5 million bond in Ashgar’s killing and is due back in court this morning on the new murder charge. Simmonds is being held on delinquency murder counts and was brought back from Dayton yesterday. He could appear in Juvenile Court as early as today.

According to documents read in Municipal Court yesterday, Simmonds and Brunner walked into the market where Ashgar was working around 11 p.m. last Wednesday.

“Mr. Simmonds had a black pistol drawn as he entered and went straight at the clerk,” the document said. “Mr. Simmonds then shot the clerk in the face, killing him. Mr. Brunner entered the store right after Mr. Simmonds with his pistol drawn and remained at the front of the store as lookout.”

Columbus police have not released possible motives in the killings of Frazier or Ashgar, except to say that Ashgar was not shot during a robbery.

Brunner and Simmonds remain suspects in at least two other crimes. Authorities say the pair shot a man in the head before taking his car at a TA truck stop in Madison County just before 5 a.m. Saturday. The man survived.

Simmonds admitted to his mother that he also was responsible for a double shooting on the South Side on July 21 that left one man dead and another man injured.

Frazier’s grandmother says it was that shooting that got her grandson killed.

“Lamont knew too much, and that’s why they took his life,” Sheena Daniels said from her South Side home last night. Daniels said she believes — and said detectives told her — that Frazier’s knowledge of the July 21 shooting death of Quinten Prater, 22, on Lilley Avenue might have cost him his life.

She said that Frazier had known both Simmonds and Brunner, and that both had been to her home on several occasions.

Also yesterday, the State Highway Patrol released more information about the contact that patrol Sgt. Jeff Shane had with Simmonds and Brunner in the hours before the shooting at the truck stop in London.

Patrol logs show that at 1:24 a.m. Saturday, there was a report of two youths walking east on I-70 about a mile from the TA truck stop.

At 2:07 a.m. Shane notes that he is with an abandoned car on I-70 and is looking for the two people who had been walking the highway. Authorities say the car was a 1996 Pontiac Bonneville stolen in Columbus and that police had sent out an alert that Brunner and Simmonds were known to be driving it.

For reasons unknown, the car wasn’t flagged as stolen when Shane ran its license plate.

At 2:12 a.m., Shane notes that he is with “the subjects” on the highway ramp and that he will drop them off at the TA truck stop. At 2:17 a.m., he writes that he is at the TA.

That coincides with security cameras at the truck stop, which captured the first images of Brunner and Simmonds inside the store about 2:20 a.m.

Shane, a 29-year veteran of the patrol, has been placed on desk duty while the patrol investigates why he broke policy when he didn’t check Simmonds and Brunner for weapons or get their names and check them against state databases before he gave them what the patrol calls “a courtesy ride.”

Dispatch Reporters John Futty and Jim Woods contributed to this story.

tdecker@dispatch.com

hzachariah@dispatch.com

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